Approaching Trigger’s Kill La Kill critically is a daunting task. It has been a divisive series since its first episode and the scrutiny it has been placed under by fans even now, weeks after its last episode has aired, means that there are so many arguments and debates that there is an unspoken expectation to fall on one side of the fence. Is the series feminist or misogynist? Does it have character development or just caricatures? It is a narrative wasteland or stylistic grab bag? Better or worse than Gurren Lagann?
about chutzpah and indomitable spirit, about magical girls and bondage monsters
That last point is one of a number of elephants in the room when it comes to this series, thanks in no small part to it being plastered over the initial marketing material, sharing the same director - Hiroyuki Imaishi - and a multitude of staff including writer Kazuki Nakashima. Studio Trigger’s inception is well documented, but suffice it to say that the production team and only their second original creative effort after Little Witch Academia means that Kill La Kill started with the most fearsome of challenges: expectation.
A review of Lupin III: A Woman Called Fujiko Miine
The length and breadth of the Lupin III franchise means that any new instalment in it - whether series, film or OVA - has space to rearrange the tried and tested gentleman thief formula. If The Woman Called Fujiko Mine is the first Lupin III entry you’ve seen (and for anime fans of a certain age it will be more likely than not) then it may be odd to move onto the lighter, wackier offerings such as Miyazaki’s well regarded Castle of Cagliostro.
no love lost between professionals
The Woman Called Fujiko Mine, a 2012 series now two movies and a television special in the past, is dark, oppressive and delves into sex, sexuality and sexual violence right from the outset. For better or worse, the series owes a debt to Cowboy Bebop: both share a smooth, sometimes discordant, jazz soundtrack (although Yoko Kanno’s offering is far and away superior), a welcomingly cosmopolitan setting, an episodic structure, and, until it is fully explored later in the series, Fujiko’s past comes off like an homage to Bebop’s Faye. Both series obviously pay their debt to innumerable other genres - film noir being just one - but it’s there that the similarities between the two series ends.
With a title that summons up thoughts of other infamous maid focused shows such as He Is My Master and a premise which seems ripe to follow in the lusty sexualisation of maids demonstrated so keenly by other series, Kaichou wa Maid-sama! does not seemed primed for success. Surprising then that the opening three episodes are so superbly proportioned - often amusing, sometimes touching but always great fun. Its greatest triumph though is not the feministic duality of a strong-minded school girl with a subservient part-time job, or a protagonist with genuine and affecting reasons for her quiddities, but how expertly it demystifies maid cafés: turning them from restaurants of desire into just another workplace. It's hard to imagine the remainder of the series will sputter when the pace and quality of its beginning is so capable.
the exposure of the cafés as something not simply for the deviant or socially maligned makes them seem more accessible
Misaki Ayuzawa lives with her peculiar younger sister and frail mother in a decrepit house - surviving day-to-day after her father disappeared, saddling the family with a large debt. To make up for the loss of income, Misaki took a job in a maid café in a neighbouring town, working whenever she can - including after school where she has risen through grit and determination to become a much respected student council president. As one of only a few girls in the recently boys-only school she is fiercely competitive and is known throughout the student body as strict and unyielding. That is until a handsome and capricious boy, Takumi Usui, discovers her occupation as a maid, threatening to undermine the position she built for herself at school. Takumi is not all that he seems however and despite others finding out her profession, her secret remains safe for the time being.
